Cause and Effect

I've been ruminating a bit on the nature of causation, and I've been coming to a couple conclusions that I figured I would jot down. I think that the way we think of causation in our scientific age is backward, and it is creating unnecessary problems in the areas of mind-body relations* and freedom of the will**. This won't be an argument for either a soul which is distinct from the body, or for any form of libertarian free will (to perhaps excessively oversimplify, that in order to be free in doing an action, it must have been possible for me to have done the opposite); it is merely an argument that a conceptual shift makes these concepts more plausible.

First, the mind-body problem. It is commonly remarked that we have no idea how an immaterial mind could interact with a material body, so the concept of a mind causing physical motion ends up being incoherent. However, I would suggest that the opposite is the case. Mind-body interaction is precisely where the concept of causation comes in; it is clearer that I cause the billiard ball to move by intentionally picking it up then it is that the billiard ball moves because a pool stick hit it. The willing agent is the primary locus of concepts of causation, with concepts of physical causation being analogous to the primary sense.

Second, the notion of libertarian free will. If I am libertarianly free, then by most accounts there must be at least some actions for which it is possible that I could have done otherwise then I did (though this need not apply to every action, and even this simple phrase is nuanced differently in contracausal- and agent-causal- libertarianism; regardless, the basic idea remains). It has been argued that this is nonsense; I perform actions for causes, and to talk about the indetermination of my actions is simply to say that I act randomly, which surely doesn't get us anywhere. However, I again would suggest that this critique is possible because we put physical, efficient causation as primary (where efficient causation is more or less the typical view of causation in science; A causes B means in some way that A makes B happen). There seems to be a different type of causation, though, which has been ignored as it cannot be reduced to efficient causation. I can write down some words here, and I did it for a reason; I can point to that reason as a sort of "cause". However, what is so incoherent about suggesting that I could have written different words in the same circumstance, while having reasons for those words? Neither act was random, yet neither was determined. In addition, it might be time to recover Aristotle's telic cause; the "cause" of my actions could be said to be their goal, which allows some maneuverability in my acting. Telic causes may not apply to nature (at least, efficient causes seem to be more fashionable), but it may be that efficient causes similarly do not apply to acts of volition in the same way they do to nature.

To go out on even more of a limb (would that be going out on a twig then?), it seems that to some extent, in the case of efficient causation, the effect is not separate from the cause. I'm getting slightly less than analytical here, but I think this is why we shy away from deterministic views of human volition: if my acts are all determined, I don't really exist. I am a lump of causes coming together without remainder.*** If volitional causation is primary then, I think we start approaching a Berkelian view where minds of some sort are the reality of things. The physical world would not exist separately from these minds. This step I think is more of a leap than the previous two, but I think there is something to it.

At any rate, given some of the above discussion contingency would be regarded as acts of volition rather than merely that which is neither necessary nor impossible (and as such, almost random; at very least stuff put together in a sort of piecemeal fashion).****

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* By "mind", I am referring to not just reason, but also the will, and perhaps primarily the will. I also would contend that reason and will entail emotion. For the curious out there, my own views on the issue fluctuate between Thomism and (a properly conceived) Cartesianism.
** Again, for the curious, my own views here are that of a(n agent-causal-)libertarian, heavily influenced by Duns Scotus.
*** Which seems to allow that while human beings cannot be determined and free, as they would ultimately be determined by something outside of themselves and so not existent, God can be determined (and so incapable of sinning) as God would not be determined by anything outside of Godself and so the same problem would not apply.
**** This idea, which was part of what started my ruminations on these issues, comes directly from Scotus.